What do Quakers believe? How do we practice our faith? The best place to look for the answers might be in a book of faith and practice. Here’s what they are and how they evolved over time.

http://quakerspeak.com/what-is-a-quaker-book-of-faith-and-practice/

Most Friends have an understanding of the architectural message that our meetinghouses express. We understand the simplicity of the structure. We understand the reason there are no steeples or crosses on the outside and why we have clear windows placed so as to invite the light to enter. We are equally sensitive to interior design. While we come into frequent, intimate contact with the meetinghouse exterior, and the land it sits on, we may be less aware of the message they convey.

There may be a little whiplash to talk about butterfly gardens after the recent article on Quaker worship from prison but I like the intentionality of Stocker’s observations: we are always making statements with the care (or non-care) of our physical space. Miami’s the kind of coastal city where climate change is very much not a theoretical issue and Stocker is very involved in his yearly meeting’s earthcare education initiatives. The meetinghouse grounds are a place to model good stewardship; taking the care to have them be inviting and quietly demonstrative of Quaker values is important outreach.

Centering is always a welcome challenge, for, as one would expect, prison can be a noisy place and competing conversations can be overwhelming. What I do is draw myself into the pictures and focus upon the images and people therein. I have accompanying pictures of places visited by Friends and sent to me over the years with scenery that, for me as a person raised on the concrete pavements of New York City, gives me visions of natural beauty without the clutter of building structures and the like.

Never Having Set Foot in the Meetinghouse

When the meetinghouse is on the other side of state prison walls.

Friends Journal

As far as I know, the final settlement in that case was never made public. In a larger sense, the “final settlement” demanded by God’s grace and justice will never be measured in dollars, but there is something satisfying about knowing that money was involved: almost nothing slices through pious misdirection or sophistry like cold cash. But it’s also true that cash doesn’t cut deeply enough.

I’m still unconvinced we’re all doing enough to bring daylight to skeletons in our closets or healing to victims. Lawsuits make everyone clam up, yet they too often seem to be the only mechanism for shedding light on the situation in the first place.

https://blog.canyoubelieve.me/2019/02/trustworthy-part-one-cost-of-betrayal.html

Many of us find difficulty in facing change. The way a meeting house is arranged and the way Quaker faith is expressed have both changed over time. There have always been those who find it difficult if not impossible to let go of what has gone before. In my local meeting I always sit in the same place and acknowledge that I find change difficult, but in spite of this there are ways in which I have changed.

I suspect part of thr context of this is the hopes and fears of British Friends as they embark on a recision of their book of Faith and Practice. An editing group has recently been named.

https://stumblingstepping.blogspot.com/2019/02/belonging-and-difference.html

In the light of our high ideals, it can be hard for individual Quakers not to feel inadequate. I certainly do. We’re exhorted to “let our lives speak”, and I often feel like my life doesn’t have much to say. But I am a writer. As a community that listens patiently for the truth, Quakers provide a unique place for creativity. The faith that can sit through hours of Meeting – through boredom, frustration, distraction – is the same thing that keeps me going when I’m struggling for my next idea. We worship in silence, but we’re waiting for words, which somehow gives me faith that, if I wait in front of a blank page for long enough, the right story will come.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jan/09/top-10-quakers-in-fiction?CMP=twt_gu

Now the astronauts had used that same rhetorical strategy but on a planetary and even interplanetary scale. Speaking the words of Genesis, they sent a message of healing to a wounded world; they expressed a certain cosmic humility about our place in the universe; and, most of all, they shared goodwill, jaw‐dropping in its simplicity, with “all of you on the good earth.” A moral and existential vision took hold of me in that moment and has never let go. Though I couldn’t have articulated it as such then, it was a realization of original goodness.

Genesis: Outer Space and Inner Light

Outer space and Inner Light

Friends Journal

If all the world interacted on the basis of consensus, the world would be a far better place. But if all the world functioned on the basis of sense of the meeting, as Friends do, the world would be a very different place altogether. Everyone would have full responsibility to find the best way forward for everyone.

http://www.nyym.org/content/what-is-clerking-consciousness